Hebrew 51 - Lesson 33

Lesson 33 introduces:
  • Past tense.
  • A"V verbs
  • Conjugated form for each pronoun There is only one past tense in Hebrew. Therefor to express thoughts like,
  • I had studied before coming to Vermont,
  • I studied in Israel,
  • While at the Army I was studying,
  • I have been studying in UVM for a year,
  • I have been studied in UVM for a year,
    - all translates to one form of past tense- "Lamadeti" or "A_Ni Lamadeti".

    To provide a verb's root with a past tense format a suffix is added to the root. For each pronoun there is a different suffix added. That makes a nice round number of 10 different endings. The nice thing is that most of the suffixes sound like the pronoun suffixes, what makes it easy to remember the appropriate suffix.

    (Students who want to maker the connection between past and present tense forms of a verb will notice a number of changes. For verbs of the complete class, the Vav (following Pay Hapoal) is removed in past tense. For verbs of the L"H class, the Hay drops. For Piel and HifIl verbs the Mem drops and for all, - the voweling structure is changing).

    When making a reference to action that was done by 1st or 2nd person, there is no need to use the pronoun (as a subject). In such cases, the pronoun is embedded within the verb and can be identified based on the verb's suffix.

    TIXXX
    TAXXX
    TXXX
    --XXX
    HXXX
    NUXXX
    TEMXXX
    TENXXX
    UXXX
    UXXX
    Click here to see example of past tense
    conjugated forms of different verbs

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